Today, I leave my hometown of Niagara-On-The-Lake, a town known for many things – it’s beauty, the War of 1812, and of course, all the many, many wineries that are scattered throughout the entire town. I visited one of those wineries during my vacation, Joseph’s Estate Wines, just to pick up a bottle to enjoy during my stay. What I found there was amazing! Not just a lot of good wine, but also grape seed oil (which I’ve heard quite a bit of,) along with something that I’d never heard of before – flour made from the skin of grapes! At Joseph’s, they make grape skin flour not only because they don’t want to waste any part of the grape, but also because it’s chock full of so many great health benefits. And it’s gluten-free.

Being a gluten-free flour, you can’t make any yeast bread or rolls out of it without adding some other type of flour – such as white or whole wheat (I wonder though, if you could use almond or corn flour to make a loaf of gluten-free grape skin bread.) But you can make other goodies, such as pancakes. I’ve even read that, because the flour is brown, you can tell your kids they’re chocolate pancakes and enjoy watching them get their health benefits as much as they enjoy eating a stack. I have no doubt that grape skin flour is delicious, but I don’t know if you’ll actually be able to trick kids into thinking it’s chocolate. After all, it smells like grapes – I’m betting it kinda tastes like them too. I’m definitely going to try it though, and I’m thinking tortillasmight also work, since those don’t need yeast either. But you don’t even have to go to all the trouble of cooking it if you don’t want to. Just throw it in a smoothie or sprinkle some on your cereal, and you’ll still reap all the benefits it has to offer.

But why should you go to all this trouble trying to find recipes that will work with grape skin flour? Well, aside from the fact that it’s something different (and fun!) to try, grape skin flour also really does carry a host of great health benefits.

One of those is that it’s full of antioxidants. In grape skin flour these antioxidants are called reservatrols, and these reservatrols have tons of health benefits in humans and animals. Like any other antioxidant they’ll help to fight and prevent cancer in your system, but they also have anti-inflammatory properties and they’ll help regulate your blood sugar. In addition to that, grape skin flour also has tons of iron – a quarter cup of the stuff will give you a whopping 107% of your daily value of it. And that’s something to sing about (especially for women during their reproductive years,) since iron is one of the most difficult things for people to get enough of through their diet.

The bottom line is, if you happen to come across grape skin flour the way I did, pick a bag up. It’s typically pretty cheap. I got mine for about $5 and Niagara-On-The-Lake isn’t known for its low prices. Once you have it, come back here to get recipes on how to use it – I’m planning on posting lots within the next little while!

6 Responses to “A Look at Grape Skin Flour”

Thanks for commenting and stopping by, Judy! I’ve already made quite a bit – my favourites were bread and brownies. Unfortunately, all the pictures on my phone got deleted and so, back to the kitchen I go. I’ll try to have some up soon for ya!

Hi Marilyn! Wow, I always love hearing from visitors but I get especially tickled when visitors such as yourself come from, or are at least familiar with, my hometown of Niagara-on-the-Lake!

So, grape skin flour. I’m so happy someone found my little post on it useful! You can do a lot with it, although I’ve found it to be quite dense and so typically you need to use another flour along with it. I realize your husband has celiac, but I’ve tried substituting about 2/3 of white flour with almond flour and using grape skin flour for the remaining 1/3. Works beautifully. Here’s a chocolate chip cookie recipe that demonstrates how to do it:

2 1/2 cups almond flour, 1/4 cup grape skin flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 cup vegetable oil (of course you can use grape seed oil too!), 1 tablespoon vanilla extract, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1 cup chocolate chips. Mix dry ingredients separately from the liquid, then add the wet into the dry. Place small balls of about 1/2″ – 1″ on a baking sheet and place in a 350 degree oven for about 7 – 10 minutes. The flour will turn the cookies darker, making it difficult to judge when they’re done by colour alone so test for firmness instead. A spatula should lift the entire cookie without bending it over causing it to fold in on itself.

I’ve also made pancakes with the flour – again, just substituting mostly almond flour and then about 1/3 of grape skin flour. Let me know how those work for you!

Hi: I got a bag of this Royal Rouge flour from my brother-in-law in Grimsby Ontario. He was raving about it Now I have it at home here in the Okanagan Valley, BC, where despite all our vineyards and wineries, grape flour its unheard of. Looking forward to some unique & healthy ways of using it in our day to day cooking/baking, etc.

Thanks for stopping by! Grimsby’s right around the corner from where I grew up! Next time I go back home for a visit I’m definitely going to have to stop and pick some more up. I practiced many recipes with the last bag I got and think I have a few things that work. And it seems this is one ingredient that interests quite a lot of people!

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